Emby transcoding on HP N54l (ubuntu)

[w31 0]

Hi. I have some problems and questions with Emby on my N54l.
 

At first - I'm just learning ubuntu and Emby and I may don't know some simple things and don't know which logs should I add here.

Currently I'm using Emby as mediaserver, Kodi 15 on my ODROID C1 ubuntu as main player and emby web interface on my workstation.

 

1. I can't install new Emby addon for Kodi 15. When I open Beta repo - It doesn't show any addons for my Kodi. Before start I uninstalled old plugin. skin and old repo from Kodi. I think the problem is my Kodi 15 (development build) but I stuck with it as only Kody with odroid support.
2. Emby settings told me what it wouldn't use transcoding if it doesn't needed. I can easylly play any video (even 1080p) directly with samba sharing (through gigabit network and wi-fi) on my workstation and my odroid. With all things running on my server it's hardly uses 2-4% of server CPU. But when I try to use Emby web on workstation - it starts to transcode video and eats 100% CPU and can play only 720p with 1MB/s. It is OK when I play video through internet from my parents house and may be good enough for N54l CPU, but for local gigabit network this quality is too low. If I use any better quality video freezes. I thought what if I use max resolution and bitrate for current video it should play it directly without transcoding, but I was wrong. It is just stops playing. I tried Plex instead of Emby and it works well, but I want to run Emby here. If I try to play video (even 480p) with old kodi plugin it doesn't play anything at all, just Freezes my odroid (I know there was emby plugin update for ARM, but look at issue#1 here). I can't understand why Emby thinks it should use transcoding. What settings I should change for letting me play 1080p directly? I know I can use network path to media folders instead of local paths and it should help me somehow but here is issue number 3.
3. I shared my server media folders with samba and can access their content wih Win7 or ubuntu and Kodi on odroid. But when I try to set this network paths (like "\\192.168.0.10\media\video\tvshow" or "\\Zserver\media\video\tvshow") for my Emby media library - Emby web just says path doesn't exist and still uses old local path ("root\Zdata\media\video\tvshow"). If I try to specify path through web interface - it shows nothing: no my server, no my workstation shared folders, just blank space. I saw somewhere what network path to media folders could solve my issue #2 so I'd like to know what am I have missed here.
4. Sometimes when idle Emby stops responding through web and "//192.168.0.10:8096/mediabrowser" says page doesn't exist. Even "service mediabrowser restart" can't help. Only solution for me is restart whole server. I think I should add log file here, but don't know which one.
5. Also sometimes Emby web stops responding to mouse klicks in firefox. I have Adblock and NoScript installed but they both are off for 192.168.0.10. If I use chrome instead all looks fine, but chrome is not my preferred browser. Is there any solution for this?

 
hardware specs:

 

 

Server: Headless HP N54l microserver, 8G RAM, 5x4TB HDD in Raidz2, Gigabit ethernet, ubuntu server 14, Emby

Workstation: Intel I7, 16G RAM, Asus Maximus VI Formula, GTX 770, 1300 Mbps Wi-Fi (5GHz), Win7 Ultimate, Firefox

HTPC: Odroid C1, ubuntu, Kodi 15 Isengard, Gigabit ethernet

Network: TP-LINK AC1750 Archer C7 - Gigabit ethernet, 1300 Mbps Wi-Fi (5GHz)

 

 

If I need provide any logs - just ask.

 

 

[c0m3r 95]

I cant really help with most of your issues as I don't use linux but I have an N54l and have none of the issues you mention. I run it with windows 7 and works flawlessly both my LAN and through remote applications. Direct plays to the vast majority of my clients with the only transcoding ive noticed being my sisters iPad.

[w31 0]

I run it with windows 7 and works flawlessly

heh.. I should use windows server instead of ubuntu from start. But I was too lazy to get a license so I got ubuntu and ZFS. Now all my media on ZFS raidz2 and I think there is no support to ZFS in windows.

May be anyone with ubuntu could help me?

[c0m3r 95]

Had i not had a windows 7 license i wasnt using i would likely have used ubuntu myself. Hopefully someone here is doing the same

[thefirstofthe300 291]

One thing about ZFS is that as far as I know, it still isn't 100% stable on Linux. Also, the recommended amount of RAM for ZFS is 1GB per TB of storage, which means that you may need to upgrade the RAM. What does htop spit out at you when ZFS is writing to disk/reading from disk?

 

I hate to ask the obvious but do you have a samba server installed on the server and the samba client installed on the Emby machine? If so, can you access shares via Nautilus? What does your samba config look like (please use something like hastebin or pastebin, I recommend the former).

[w31 0]

http://pastebin.com/AmPHpTU3
This is my smb.conf
I'm able to access files from my Windows7 and odroid ubuntu

I hate to ask the obvious but do you have a samba server installed on the server and the samba client installed on the Emby machine?

Samba server and Emby are on same machine and I haven't installed anything for samba, I have what came with standart ubuntu server 14.4
 

If so, can you access shares via Nautilus?

I have Xfce installed on my server, so only Thunar here and it able to show me network shares. Same for Windows 7 and Kodi (not sure how Kodi's file browser called)
 

One thing about ZFS is that as far as I know, it still isn't 100% stable on Linux. Also, the recommended amount of RAM for ZFS is 1GB per TB of storage, which means that you may need to upgrade the RAM. What does htop spit out at you when ZFS is writing to disk/reading from disk?

Yes I heared about huge memory usage, I got 8GB RAM for this. And here is my htop screen with 23GB writing to raidz:

sorted by CPU:

 

 

 

 

sorted by MEM:

 

 

 

 

[bondfreak 14]

When using browser playback emby will always transcode, since browser don't support direct playback of most HD media files (.mp4, .mkv, ...).

 

 

First, you should set up path substitution so that your clients can access media directly. This is done in the library settings. Use something like the following for a linux client (kodi-like)

 

 

/media/yourfiles/movies  --> smb://yourIP/yourShareName

 

You have to set a new substitution entry for every path you need to access. Looking at your smb.conf, for "video" you should use

 

 

/Zdata/video --> smb://yourIP/Video

 

If you have TV shows and movies alltogether in this folder, it will not work with emby. You should have separate shares for TV shows and movies and your library should also be set up with separate folders.

 

The next thing is metadata. I ran into the problem that Kodi did not show any covers, background images and so on. The solution for me was saving all metadata in the media directories. To do so, the system user running the mediabrowser service (i think it is called "mediabrowser") has to have write access to your media folders. The mediabrowser log will indicate wrong permission when trying to save files to these folders.

Of course you have to turn on the option to save metadata in the media folders by ticking it in the emby metadata settings page.

 

Unfortunately i can not help you with your stuck web interfaces, but i hope smooth kodi playback will work now

You could also use Kodi for Windows 7 and mediabrowser as backend there, so windows clients can also use direct file access.

The path substitution configuration changes a little for windows clients;

 

 

/Zdata/video --> \\yourIP\Video

 

 

Regards,

Bondfreak

Edited April 28, 2015 by bondfreak

[Luke 36997]

the browser can direct stream to some extent, with chrome having the great chance of success.

[w31 0]

I am sorry for not having replied, I was busy on the set of the film, and there was no time to deal with the server. finally I got here.
since my last post there was several patches, and most of my problems were solved.
Kodi plugin works just fine and plays 1080p without freezes while Emby server takes almost no processing power. EMBY on ubuntu is already stable and not crash. Firefox interface works without problems (unless the server processor is not loaded 100%), but still can not play 1080p, only 720p.

For me there is still problem with path substitutions:
/media/yourfiles/movies  --> smb://yourIP/yourShareName
/Zdata/video --> smb://yourIP/Video
/Zdata/video --> \\yourIP\Video
none of this could help me. But thats ok.

Thank you all for answers! I think now I have good media server.

[Luke 36997]

See http://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/790-how-to-report-a-problem/

 

The web browser can't play files over the network so your paths don't matter. IT always has to stream through the server.

[geaves 13]

For me there is still problem with path substitutions:

/media/yourfiles/movies  --> smb://yourIP/yourShareName

/Zdata/video --> smb://yourIP/Video

/Zdata/video --> \\yourIP\Video

none of this could help me. But thats ok.

 

 

 

That's because path substitution on Linux will not work unless there is a mount point for your samba shares, whilst you can mount the samba share on Ubuntu the new share path is /run/usr/1000/gvfs you'll then see each samba share, something like smb-share:server=<servername>=<sharename>

 

I learnt something from another thread on here, Kodi has some sort of reference written in it's code to allow you access smb shares, Emby does not, so for Emby to see those share you have to create a mount point for each smb share. 

 

I have created folders for Movies, TvShows and Music under the media folder in Ubuntu, so /media/Movies, /media/Tvshows etc, you then edit the /etc/fstab.conf file to point to that mount point.

 

My samba share names are the same as the folders created under /media, so my fstab entry for movies is //serverIP/movies /media/movies cifs user,users 0 0

 

What this actually does is to create a symlink or in windows terms shortcut's to each of your film folders and their contents, once you have done this you should be able to locate your media library within Emby, but you have to create an fstab entry for each media type, which would mean you could use the Emby plugin for Kodi. This is the setup I have albeit on different machines.

 

To help with this you could install something like Webmin, but it's not necessary.

 

There is an excellent wiki explaining this, but again I have changed the user option on mine.